This has happened to me on Yahoo! The contact appeared as online and I sent her a message and she signed off a second later. It happened again another time after she had said she was not going to be online at that time. It seems that they appear as online on the adium list when in reality they're offline, and when you send them a message Adium (or is it Yahoo?) realises they are actually offline.

Not sure about with MSN, but with Yahoo this could be an Offline Message the person has left for you... IIRC there may be fallback code in Adium which is assuming someone is online once they message you (in order to deal with the current problems with invisibility of Yahoo, AIM, and Jabber buddies).

If it happens again, when the person really is online could you ask if they left you an offline message?

If it happens again, when the person really is online could you ask if they left you an offline message?

we'll do, this happens allot when i talk to my girlfriend online, along with the quick log off, the status 'offline' is show, the status dosnt go away until i restart adium (in some cases it wont go away even after i restart adium). i know for a fact that she has a really bad internet connection that works sporadically at best, usually when she sends me offline IMs i get them, she dosnt send them all to often.

but definitely for sure, ill ask the given contact if they sent me an offline message